The Trickster
by PallaPlease
Summary: [Hsi Wu/Jade]  An introspective as years go by, while the trickster watches a child grow.  [Four: On loving mortals.]
1. One

**The Trickster:** Part One

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        Time was a foreign concept to him, though he had long been acquainted with the passage of days and years in the most basic of senses, and he was yet the smallest, the youngest of his demonic clan.  He was the child still and would undoubtedly always be, as she had been once, and he watched her through the shadowed holes he could just barely scratch through the veined exorcism.  If he truly was a child, he reasoned he was only doing what any child would, watching over his favored toy when it was taken from him and loathing those who would take it from the delicate glass cabinet sheltering it out of his reach.  She was not theirs to play with; she was his alone, for that was how these things were done.

        Once they were done in such a manner, but now, when he was chained with shackles unseen to the smoggy realm of amber tones and floating mountains, he had no ability to punish those breaking the ancient rules.  He waited in bondage and watched her as she lived, breathing, moving, aging, as she was not unsusceptible to time like him, and it was fascinating in the beginning.  She was a lean child, small and graceful as the tiger's slinking cub, and had a masculine strength in her features most Oriental women did not, something that continued to live within her with each passing year alien to his existence.  Though she grew taller and fuller, youthful fat shedding at the onslaught of a woman's sinew, and her face became less round and sharper in its angles, that sturdy smirk remained on her face and in her blood.

        It was the want for her that pained him as few things else had done so.

        He was the trickster, the demon king of those who sought to deceive and shroud their motives until such a time that deception was no longer necessary, the plundering finally laid free, and he had planned to use her to steal from that disgusting uncle of hers.  How could he have foreseen she, too, was a trickster?  Easy enough it had been, taking the guise of a pitiful mortal and befriending her in a perfect moment of her weakness, and she had amused him with her antics, until he realized she was tricking him with her words just as he was her with his actions.  

        She did something no mortal had tried before in the thousands of meaningless years of his unending lifespan, deceived the demon Hsi Wu into chains unlike those he suffered under now; she smiled and teased and argued him through cajoling loops he had not spied before he approached her on that glorious sunshine day, and this angered him.  She, the human child Jade, had used pranks and deceptions that were not the sort meant to be used: she gave petty truths and shaded honesty in a genuine bid for someone's trust, wily in her nearly always successful efforts to gain the pure friendship she could use for her own ends, but also to protect the one she had fooled.

        He hated her with an intensity that burned over any other animosity he had ever before sheltered in grim mockery, left to rot in ceaseless unchanging life amidst the memory of sarcastic quips he had ridiculed her with the last he had seen her and the fading chunk of technology forever blinking her child's face.  It was not her place as a human to challenge his superiority over lies, nor was it her right to even consider the possibility of friendship, and he wished her damnation for giving him the want, the need, and the affection.  

        It was easy watching the veins of her softly growing childhood, screeching through the infinite skies of this empty hell to crevices and caves hidden in the largest rocks where he could peer at her without his siblings knowing his treacherous movements.  He still tasted the hatred of seeing the boy birthed of Spanish lineage when it dawned upon his human mind that there were indeed things about Jade that were mysterious and undeniably marvelous, and he had raged, throwing a mindless tantrum of childish proportions.  For years of the outside time he had played tricks on his family to whittle away time as he ignored her existence, seething inside where he knew she was growing and discovering there were things about the boy she did not find annoying or foolish.

        Hsi Wu had been a fool.

        His standard was patience, the slippery kind that worked best in cover of dark, blanketing night as he pried through the inky skies on tendril wings he had given to the bat, his multitude of children.  She had destroyed his patience when she was but a girl, irritating him with her sincerity and sneaky jests, pushing him into an aggravated need to steal what he had come for.  There was no time, no chance, he could never afford to think on her inexplicable fondness for the human he had pretended to be, whatever name he had used.  So he had tripped and fallen down the laughing slope of folly, revealing too much and sliding too quickly into his search for whatever it was he had searched for.

        He could not even remember his attempted conquest.  How had she managed to trick him so easily in so painfully breezy a manner?  Her vile treachery of honest welcome remained in his mind still, haunting his thoughts with thick, tangible disgust.

        He could have taken her, had he been patient, made her a captive toy and kept her from ever escaping his clawed grip had he so desired, but she had deceived him with nary a speck of knowledge over his true being.  This made him want her even more when finally he returned to watching her, seeing with startled crimson eyes that the child was no longer small and round, but petite and curved in a way that spoke of both threat and grace.  She was a trickster in the body of a female, fifteen years in age making her something between girl and woman in the society, though he was an ancient being and thusly knew she was a woman.  Remembrance of how he might have possessed her had he not been an impatient sop struck again, and he had snarled, returning for a few days to teasing and mocking his brothers into a furious frenzy before leaving them to deal with their own heightened anger.

        She was confident and practiced, innocent where he was dark, though both he and she were deceivers of different order.  Heads turned in the school in place of rude gestures, young men suddenly made self-conscious of this woman who could literally rip them apart, one they had mocked as children in disdain and childish idiocy.  It pleased him with an infantile sense of satisfaction when they received naught from her but cool smiles and ignoring ears, recognizing she did not think them worth her time.

        At night it was worse, as she knelt beside her small cot in the house her parents still lived in, reciting prayers to the gods after she had clicked off the phone from her evening chat with the other Chan family, from her great-grandfather to the bald man from the American government.  She prayed for things that were wise, asking for protection from her honored ancestors to guard her family and those she loved, and she prayed for him.

        He had thought her to be damning him in her nightly ritual, a thought that never failed to bring him peals of amusement; he was a demon and was thusly damned by right.  He saw her lips move, saw them form the familiar characters of his name, and it had disturbed a part of him deep inside, even as he laughed in cruel humor at her condemning, until he heard what it was she was truly praying for.  She prayed salvation for him, chanted words of foolish ideals that he might be reformed in the endless plane of hellish loneliness, in hopes of something unsaid.

        Why would she pray for him?

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**Notes:**  I do apologize if this does not fit neatly into the Jackie Chan Adventures continuity, as my family has moved to Mississippi (and, annoyingly, the county I live in does not have WB!) and I must rely on the reruns Cartoon Network has recently begun airing.  Please forgive me!  ;]

**Feedback:  **Highly appreciated.  I haven't visited the JCA section of fanfiction.net in quite a while, so I'm not sure if any Hsi Wu/Jade people are still around.  In any case, I would be very grateful for any words you would be willing to share.

**Disclaimer:  **Nope.  Don't own 'em.  I'm sad about that, too.

**Status:  **To be continued, natch.


	2. Two

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The Trickster: Part Two

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He was revered as a god once, worshipped by those he had ruled over and toyed with in complicated games none but he could be victor over, and in spite of the centuries kept tied in exile, with their grounding emptiness to humiliate his ego, he felt the basic desire for mortal worship. He was a demon and he was a god, a creature meant to hunt lesser beings for his convenience and pleasure, and now he had naught to give him the terror and honor so flattering and loved in the glorious past. It drove him to base deceptions, foolish games used on his feeble-minded siblings to gloat over his mental supremacy before the eldest would punish him, striking him away for a moment of shame. Those were the most mortifying of times, when he had been reduced to the level of Brother Shendu, the failed sibling who was in eternal punishment, and he would retreat to sulk and lick his wounds.

The endless sky was all that saved him from the infinite boredom that routinely threatened to drive his dignity from him, a state of idiocy that would lead him to torment his siblings just a bit too often and would result in his flighty retreat. Hsi Wu knew he was a fool, but he was never an imbecile nor was he ever close to a mindlessness root to supreme folly, and she had not yet driven him insane enough to attempt such a thing for escape from the regular gnashing of simple existence. He would fly for hours, days of the time that was irrelevant to him, had always been irrelevant to him, soaring with arched wings through still air that needed not the pumping of wings for the drafts were a constant underlying vein system though the air did not move. This was how he shoved past the childish things he seemed prone to doing.

She was a human, he was a god-demon, and by all accounts, by all the ancient rituals that were once code for every living being under the power of his family, she ought to worship him, revere and fear him as all other humans had done so; he was not accustomed to companionship or mockery with himself at the receiving end. How could she ever be so bold? Had he not only known her for the span of a few pitiful days? Yet somehow she had determined it was her duty to tease and ridicule him as though he of all creatures was her friend. As if, in some realm of her incomprehensible mortal mind, she assumed he cared little about her brash transgressions, as though she did not notice she was a female. 

As if they were, preposterous though the mere thought was, equals in spite of species, gender, and sheer power. Friends, allies, whatever moronic word he could think of when he hunched over in the rocks and chipped at the stone with claws to create small pieces of flat circular rock to be used in games of go with Brother Xiao Fung, even as the Wind Demon was the least patient of them all. So it seemed often enough, though he was sure many of their siblings could fight for the position, and he only played because he needed to trick and lie in something.

He had to admit amongst feelings of loathing and reluctant dislike, Jade was not of the element sky; she was not his domain, no matter how his hatred and affection declared it so. She smelled of earth, had always smelled of the loam that grew soft and husky in rain, and she was not weak or feminine as women had once been forced into being. She was strong and crafty, but not crafty in the way that Viper thief was: Jade's craftiness resided in her ability to love those she manipulated.

When he was unable to see past the resentment clouding his mind with a thick, confusing disgust after many trickles of time watching her, he found it amusing to watch the Viper in her dealings with that damned archeologist. She was a trickster, too, but her skill in the craft was prone to floundering, especially when she was faced with the boyish innocence of Jackie Chan, and he laughed loudly watching their interactions. Neither was able to see past the facades they had erected, stuck in a sticky trap they had created themselves years before when an uneasy friendship was all they could share.

Sometimes he could not watch them either, for it struck some unnamed chord of unsettled recognition in his mind or body, and inevitably he would soar back into the streaking sky to find his family, engaging random demons in games of go and ridiculing one into a blind rage. He was not like them in any way.

Always she grew older, from eight years to twelve, then to fifteen, as he recognized slowly she was praying for his salvation. 

He had no need for salvation.

The creeping seconds of dripping sand that was the time she dwelt in amidst the shadowed hollows of her own reality were oft spent glaring at her, watching and waiting carefully for the undoubtedly sinister motive she had in mind to be revealed in slumber or speech. Never once did he manage to catch her tongue traipsing about what it was she meant or wanted, and a growing fury began to bubble in his chest, threatening to make him into a mindless fool like Sister Po Kong or a temperamental headstrong creature such as Brother Tchang Zu; he caught himself once and narrowed his blood-tainted eyes thoughtfully, wondering that perhaps if he gave in to the murderous instinct tapping his mind, he would only be weakening his abilities to her own pathetic mortal level. It was a farfetched thought, an absurdly laughable one at that, to even consider it was her intent all along to drive him insane, for there was no way she could know he was watching. He had stumbled many times as of late, but he was still far from the absolute irresponsibility that would lead to the exposure of his presence. Matters such as that he would leave to Brother Xiao Fung.

Even so, what exactly did she pray for? It was difficult at night to hear, even with his honed sense of sound perception, through the protective mist she would raise with an annoyed sigh and a muttered apology to her beloved elder, the never truly named Uncle, raising into existence a barrier that made it, if not impossible, harder to tell what she said. He was swift in mind as well as in wing and speech, cocking his head to one side and listening carefully for the broken, muffled syllables as he tried to read lips, a talent he had not been able to pick up yet in the English, and Hsi Wu knew demons were tricky things by personal knowledge. Condemning a demon was an easy enough matter, with breezy effort and simple tools if one could manage to get the demon into precarious a situation it could not flee from, but salvation for a demon?

That was always a bit trickier, and there was always an accompanying price. No one prayed for a demon, unless they had no mind or sanity or anything left but their life, and those who did wanted something: power, prestige, copious amounts of money, and the like. Even, if he remembered correctly and he always did, Shadow Khan had been asked for once. He had particularly liked the bloody end Brother Shendu had given the man, all coursing blood and agonized screams, and he still held a sort of admiration for his draconic brother's skills in the crimson arts in spite of his present follies.

Jade was not the type to wish for foolish things, though he would not put it past her to try something remarkably thoughtless; but why would she pray for him of all creatures? Why not Brother Tchang Zu, who rode the lightning with skill unsurpassed? What of Sister Bai Tsa, his elder by naught but a few centuries, or Brother Tso Lan, who was cold and merciless? Oh, he had forgotten for a moment: summoning and saving were two quite different things.

A loathing was ever present with the fury, that she would dare equal herself to him all those outer years ago, a loathing intermingled with the knowledge that she was praying to save a soul he did not have, daring to think he wanted her help. He did not need her help!

Once he was a god of the skies, an embodiment of Ch'ien, unstopped and unchained, and how he had sunk if his only route to freedom lay in the blind words of a mortal child! 

"I am a god!" he snarled in the rocks that bound him in the cavernous trails deep within the stony darkness, clawing at the rocks and crying a noisy shriek of animalistic rage. "I am a god!" Damn Jade to hell, were he still in the mortal realm, he would not let this trespass free.

He had no need for salvation!

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Notes: I am so very sorry this is as short and late in coming - I haven't been able to write on my computer (where it's stored) for a while now, what with northern Mississippi being under near constant tornado/severe thunderstorm watch. The weather is supposed to be clearing soon, so I'll be able to write more without fear of electrocution or other nastiness, and I can promise the next part will be a good seven pages (which is a great deal coming from me). *doffs hat* Ah, and I've finally got a blog! Ee! Now I can post insane ramblings about my perceptions on the characters from 'Jackie Chan Adventures.'

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Feedback: Ah! Please? *cute look*

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Disclaimer: Is this where I beg for Jackie Chan's forgiveness?

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Status: Coming soon - a plot!

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Thanks: _Tajeri Lynn, Extremo Luchadore_, ew! Well...at least I learned a new word. Many thanks! I've never really written anything remotely creepy before, so that really does mean a lot. _VampireNaomi,_ see? I mentioned Xiao Fung! *points up* The whole tricksters thing is obviously of some importance to the fic (as if the title didn't give it away...-.-; Urf--). _nike shizu,_ I'm very glad you liked it. I love sap and melodrama, but for some reason I find myself writing it less and less. Ah! You picked up on the psychology! I love psychology oodles and oodles... _Spleef, _whose character bios saved my butt when it came to spelling. Oh, and for accepting my submission...*sheepish look* I love your site! 


	3. Three

**The Trickster:** Part Three

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        It very nearly killed him one day, in that broad use of a word he had no meaning or need for, a sudden explosion of blinding agony that struck the back of his mind like a knife to his arguable soul.  He had spasmed, plummeting through the pointless air and clawing at his head with his sharpened nails, trying to rip his own head off in futile hopes of cutting away the pain.  Like an animal he had raged, screaming high-pitched echoes that shattered the smaller rocks near him with the quivering cruelty in the sound, and only after thick blood began to peel down his hands did the internal pain subside at the heels of a self-inflicted agony.

        Pausing, catching himself on a rock shaped as a darkly edged chair, he heaved deep breaths, not so much frightened as on edge, wondering where or what had attacked him, tried to kill him when he could not touch anyone but his siblings.  He had crept over the rock, absently licking away the blood and ruffling his canvas wings in the air agitatedly, and he spat out the blood, a bitter taste to it akin to dark acid or the ilk.  The sky attracted his solid scarlet eyes, flickering from corner to corner in a predatorial manner as he sought the deathly source, and he had found nothing.  There were, just as he had suspected and known, no beings near enough to attack him from inside or out.  

        In that case, what could it have been?  Age it was not; he was far too young to even be close to decaying, as not one of his elder siblings showed any signs of their own age.  They were youthful yet and though he often wished in fits of boredom to simply pass away just for the sake of a change, he had found they could not rot or change any more physically.  It simply could not happen in the gods damned void, no matter how he wished it would happen to Sister Po Kong or any one of his brothers.  Sister Bai Tsa, really, was the only one he could stand or trust at all, and that lead him to considering whether or not one of their brothers or horrid sister had played the demonic trick on him.

        No, it was not in their blood nor their sorcery.  The god of pestilence, if he could recall the smug imbecile correctly, was far more interested in ruining the lives of young women than granting his powers to a mere demon.  Thusly, it could not have been one of his siblings.

        Brother Shendu, he considered briefly, and then discarded that thought.  The shamed fool could do naught in either direction, and besides, someone would have noticed had he tried anything suspicious.

        This left, once he had thought and narrowed the selection down, frequently touching bloodied claws to the superficial gouges in his scalp in test, only the sprawling world outside in the mortals' dimension.  There was someone who was seeking to kill him and it arose the bloodlust inside him, stirring him to loathing and a hating drive to find the unthinking human questing for the key to his death.  He would tear a hole through which he could peer to trace any energy he might be able to catch, a remnant of whatever prayer or ritual had spiced its magic in his streams of dark blood.

        He would not admit it, but he did feel a string of fear deep inside; Hsi Wu of the Sky did not feel prepared to meet the nothingness that awaited his death.  He was a demon and would never be permitted the grace of a true hell, but would simply fade from existence, disappearing from mind and heart and soul until even the histories would not recall his ever living.  Revenge kept him from succumbing to the worming fear, the knowledge that there was a bastard out in the mortal realm desiring to kill him, and knowing that Jade still dwelt in her passage of time.  She would not be let free so easily by some human sorceror who thought to slay the demon birthed from Ch'ien, aspect of sky and the creative mind.  

        The hole was easy to make, for he had grown skilled at making them as he spied on the Chan girl, and he, too tired to attempt finding a new spot and waiting for his speedy healing to cover the gashes, stayed on the unnatural rock formation.  Pricking claws into the air, he tore with quick, strong gestures, peeling the atmosphere aside to create a thin veil through which he could see the passing of the mortal world.  He could try to push past that veil, as he had often tried in the past, but he knew already that he would fail as he always had.

        It was Jade he saw, as he always saw as soon as he opened a viewing portal.  Perhaps it was the gods' way of laughing at him, at pointing fingers and giggling heinous laughs that he would always see her first.  The revulsion and the hated thread of caring, buried under a mountain of rage and disgust, sparked bile in his throat immediately, meeting with his anger at the foolish human he believed had attacked him.  Only when he saw her make a traditional gesture across her face for protection from demons did he first realize what it was.

        She prayed for him, a demon of depravity and no salvation, and through that was he being slowly killed.

        He had known there was something innately uneasy about her praying, though he had first laughed at it, and then felt a smoldering outrage as she continued it throughout the years.  Jade was going to kill him, he understood with some amazement and a growing fury, she would cause him to kill himself just to stop the agony her prayers brought him.  He was a demon, not a fallen soul!  He had never been an angel, never been pure, and those who do not fall but are simply created in a land others fall to cannot be saved or rescued.  

        Damnation was all he knew; damnation was all he could live in.

        Hsi Wu was convinced she was doing it on purpose, a tricky underhanded deception to make him believe she was but a fool when in truth she sought to rip him from the inside out.  How could she do such to him?  He was a god, an omnipotent creation of darkness and soaring evil, and she was but a mortal woman of now seventeen years.  It was not her place, as many things she did were not her place, and he hated her even more for the knowing he could do nothing to stop her.  She would kill him and he would never stop her, because there was no way for him to do so.

        A furious scream tore from his throat, driving him to slash his claws enraged at the veil and pull back, cradling his paw and seething as his wings unfolded sharply with his rage.  He wanted to kill her in that moment, wanted to take from her what she was seeking to take from him, and it had nearly frustrated him into a blind rage.  As it was, he scratched his arched toes along the rocks beneath him, gouging deep scrapes through the stone as he thrust his wings through the air and pushed off into the atmosphere.

        The need to destroy wove into his flying, causing him to dive and scream, using echolocation and lean limbs to break apart several of the rocks of varying sizes, and he landed gracefully on one, smashing a thin, small pillar with the back of his charcoal hand.  They tumbled, vanishing to the unending amber sunset space, eternally falling away from him and toward a solid earth that did not exist in this realm, and he snarled again.  It was not enough!  He could still feel the consuming hate, the revulsion of knowing she was praying for a salvation that would rip him apart and knowing that she could very well do so as he watched, helpless.

        Hsi Wu, like all demons and gods, was not used to feeling helpless.  Others had felt powerless beneath him; he crushed them and fooled them, deceiving minds into games they could never win, as forever it had been until the Immortals had locked he and his equally cursed siblings in this hideous void.  Thus had it been done for centuries upon millennia, and to know the prospect of being slayed by some girl who had dared contradict his power was unlike anything he had felt before.  He had never felt such hate or rage, a continuous reviled explosion of unstopping fury that lasted for weeks and months of the outside time.

        She had deceived him yet again!

        She had thought to be his friend, had dared cross the lines of feminine inferiority and his being a deity, as though it were her right and her privilege, but she had fooled him again!  She had made him believe she was praying for him, trying to salvage him from the darkness of his natural existence, and t'was all to trick him into a state of amused evil.  And now she would kill him with her deceptive words of inexplicable kindness.

        "I will kill you!" he screamed into the shadows, into the undying light of the void, and then he waited in smoldering silence for the next dagger of pain.

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**Notes:**  Ah!  Season three of JCA is not canon in this fic, sorry.  I also apologize for this part being so short – I've redesigned how the fic will be, and I'll keep ya'll waiting 'til I get to the good part.  ^.-

**Feedback:**  Mmm!

**Disclaimer:**  Don't own 'em, sorry.

**Status:**  I /will/ be writing longer parts, and there'll be more references to Eastern and Western theology.

**Thanks:**    _Lisa-Chan,_ I certainly hope it's still good!  _VampireNaomi, _oh, a blog is basically a web journal for pretty much anything; I'm posting informal essays and thoughts related to JCA (at chanclantime!.blogspot.com, natch).  _Chibi Hime,_ yes!  *victory!*  Still creepy?  I hope so.  _Aglaranna, _/love/ your name, by the way, very lovely.  It's enthralling!  *double victory!*  _Amanda/Artiste, _I'm trying to blend a mix of the JCA perception of demons with the original Chinese perception (the former being a bit lighter, while the latter is very sinister – JCA-esque won't be for a while, though).  Glad ya'll liked it!


	4. Four

**The Trickster:** Part Four

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        He had met, once, in the sort of vague passing that accompanied many moments of a demon's life, a pantheon of gods from the western seas, creatures that were obsessed with fornication and mindless play.  It was disgusting, watching with a dour expression as they continued their ever-changing dramatics of random loving and unending murdering.  As Sister Po Kong and most of his brothers indulged themselves in the frantic, unexplained foolishness that surrounded them, he had taken to the sky, striking off to sulk and hide as the child he was.  He did not want to waste his time visiting one of the deity kingdoms in their individual dimensions and whatnot, doing naught but watching with bored eyes as they performed foul deeds.

        "Moronic fools," Sister Bai Tsa had hissed before she curled into a ball and shut the rest of the world out effectively.  She was young at the time, the same age he was now, and though she was a bit more fascinated in the acts than he, she still found it to be a grand waste of her valuable time.

        He wanted no part of it; he simply wanted to fly.  The skies of this Mediterranean realm were different than those of China, in the decade before his family had struck out to capture and reign large sovereignties of their own.  Asia's were brittle and cold, a reminiscent chill that always pervaded the bones and mind to remind him of where he was, but this was a humid warmth that engulfed and surrounded in a cloying embrace.  Relishing with deep interest the change in air currents – warm and smooth twists of air that gave him more exotic turns and a greater ability to swoop in changing patterns then the sleek quickness his homeland's atmosphere gave – he had dove and spiraled until the mortal skies were rent asunder by the fall of night.

        Then had been when he saw her, a silvery girl-god that flowed as moonlight from the sky and gently rested her feet on the wet grass of a flowing meadow below the stern white glow of Artemis, moon goddess and one of the few gods that had not partaken of the mindless celebration.  "Hello," she had said to him as he hesitated, a child entranced by the ethereal beauty of the western deity.  Her smile had been gentle, an understanding one, and she had continued, "Would you come with me, then, to visit my shepherd boy?"

        He did not remember answering, though he did recall following her, creeping through the soft grass as his arched heels grew uncomfortable in the humid wetness that was Greece.  She glowed, a silvery whiteness that engulfed and flickered like a silver candle, but he was reminded of the sort of being that the humans considered a mother: an indomitable gentle presence that soothed and comforted.  That was the one time he had longed for the guiding forces of the mother he and his siblings had never known.

        "He is Endymion," she spoke eloquently after several moments of carefully preserved silence.  They traipsed down one of many hills, passing between thick, gnarling trees that bent in strange directions but always clung in worshipping fronds to the sky.  "Oh, but I should introduce myself," she had then laughed, her long silver hair twining of its own volition into a delicate braid, a tender weave that looped up to wrap in light spirals around her glowing scalp.  

        She stopped, and faced him, and spoke with a kind smile, "I am Serenity, daughter of the moon-goddess."  Her expression turned to curiosity, an innocent youthfulness on her dainty features, and he realized she too was a child in the terms of the grander beings of uncounted age and undetermined power.  "Who are you, though, strange one?  I know you are of the eastern sea's gods, but your name I do not know of."

        "I am Brother Hsi Wu," he finally answered in his hissing, rasping voice, too young yet to have developed the idiosyncrasies that would lead him to be more cautious in his dealings.  Lapsing into silence he had continued to follow the silver being, the mother and the child and the quiet gift of moonlight swaying, large clawed toes pressing and breaking streams of flowers and grass underfoot.  

        His height was still smaller than it would be, somehow standing a foot under her graceful stance, and he had felt a burst of envy that even the girl-child was taller than he.  With his siblings he was inadequate enough.

        "Ah," she whispered with a note of blissfully happy satisfaction, and she ran lightly down another hill.  Tiny pools of water formed where her gentle weight pushed down just so into the spongy earth, glistening portals into a miniature ocean that glittered under the moon and stars before fading back into the engulfing mud.  "This is my shepherd boy," she called, turning around to smile as her braided and woven hair glistened like a halo pinned to her head.

        It was a human boy, of ten-and-five years with a head of shaggy black hair and swarthy skin, deep in an unnatural slumber with a shepherd's crook nestled in his arm.  Hsi Wu had paused, confused as to why a goddess, any being of supernatural power and unbendable right over the mortals, would show the level of tenderness she gave to the sleeping lad.  Serenity stooped beside him, grass staining her raiment of spun moonbeams, and tousled her long, slender fingers in the dark hair as he murmured in his un-breaking sleep and turned his face to her.  

        "What are you doing?" he had asked, thrown off-balance at the loving in her motions.  He could sense a strangeness in the young man, as though it had been decades upon decades since he had woken to see the sky, and a putrid smell filled his nostrils, a foreign emotion of beautiful tangible strength.  Love?  "Ugh," he intoned with all the strong disgust of a child and a repelled demon, taking a step back as he hunched over, wings shifting into the night.

        "You must understand, demon-god," she spoke softly, looking up as she traced her fingertips down the youthful, downy-soft cheek of her sleeping lover.  "He must sleep if we are to be together.  He must slumber unwaking, forever here in a youth if I may ever see his face again.  My grandfather Zeus, god of gods, gave this to me in gift that I would never suffer to see him in the drifting realm of death."

        "He is mortal!" was Hsi Wu's recoiling disgust, more upset at the vile love and the human body.  "His stench – ugh!"  He gagged, fangs exposed briefly in the moonlight as he stepped back again, wings moving impatiently through the air as if to herald his body into the waiting sky drifting effortlessly above.

        "You must understand!" cried Serenity, silver glow flashing brightly in a searing haze.  He had frozen, unsure of what to do as she stared at him in unmoving power, a knowing passion entering her voice as she continued in sharp, enigmatic tones, "One day you will know exactly the pain of watching a mortal someone loved and die.  Can you not see that your fate has already been determined?  See the Oracle of Delphi as she tosses her bones and reads her fortunes!"

        "What are you yammering on about?" he had demanded, feeling a defensive degree of insult rise in his body with steeled power as he prepared to launch himself into the sky.  "What mortal?  Why can't you talk normally?"

        She stared at him, an unreadable expression that dripped of a knowing sorrow, a bleeding grief she had suffered many nights as she came to visit her eternally youthful, eternally slumbering shepherd boy.  "There will come a day when you shall watch a girl," she said in a quiet voice, cupping her palm along the swell of Endymion's chin, "and she will love another.  She will grow as you watch, and she will age as foreign time passes."  She hesitated, then said in an accepting voice, "She will die."

        "You are a fool!" he raged at her, feeling some horror and fear that he could ever care for a mortal.  They were playthings, creatures of weak skin and foppish constitution, easy to tear asunder and devour in fits of sadistic delight.  Love and caring were things reserved for childish beings such as they, too low to even be the equals of a sky demon but four centuries in age, and it filled him with powerful fury that this she-god would dare tell him he would fall prey to such things.

        "Such has the Oracle of Delphi told me to speak to you," she replied in a pleading voice, cradling in her lap the head of her love.  "She only wishes for you to know that should this come to pass, there is always hope in the intricacies of time."

        "It won't come to pass!" he snapped back, baring his fangs again at her, wings pulling him into the air as he went to disappear.  "It will never happen.  Your fortunetellers are mindless and weak, moon-god."

        In the void, surrounded by shades of golden honey fire and cliffs of unchanging rocks, an unending infinity that was capable of slowly driving one mad, Hsi Wu thought on his hatred for oracles.

--

**Notes:**  This has been the weakest part so far…but, well, everything I've mentioned thus far is going to start weaving together in just a few more parts, when the plot starts to show up and the chapters get longer!  ^^  Stick with me, 'kay?

**Feedback:**  An' I'll wuv you forever an' ever an' ever an' ever…

**Disclaimer:**  Too poor, too young, too crazed.

**Status:**  The plot's a-comin'…just be patient, all…

**Thanks:**  _VampireNaomi_ (eeee!  *passes out from sheer happiness*  I love how everyone likes evil Hsi Wu!  I just…*passes out again*), _Lisa-Chan_ (*victory!*  I churned this out in about fifteen minutes, so I suppose it's an apology for how long it took part three to get out), and _Tajeri__ Lynn, Extremo Luchadore _(exactly!  And, yes, it is very anarchic – which might stay around for a bit, until I get to the point I've been taunting about for ages…*sweatdrops*).  Mucho gracias, ya'll.


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